December 29, 2008

Marty slams Bloomy in year-end interview!

The Brooklyn Paper

In what's becoming a beloved holiday tradition, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz sat down recently for his annual year-end interview by The Brooklyn Paper, and he wasted no time getting to his favorite economic stimulus package, Atlantic Yards. Here are some highlights:

"I am a tremendous supporter. We need Atlantic Yards more this year coming than we needed it at any time before.... And having an arena and a national team is a great selling point to corporations that are looking to either relocate or expand. Basketball has become the sport of corporate — corporate sport. The men and women that work for corporations eagerly look forward to going to games and people bring clients there. So having an arena and a national team would be an unbelievable catalyst for jobs and new companies coming and staying in Brooklyn — my humble opinion!"
...

"I have to tell you, when it was first proposed, attempts were made by me and my office to reach out, but the immediate response was, 'We don’t want it. Shove it! How many times do we have to tell you, Mr. Markowitz, we don’t want it. We don’t want the buildings. We don’t want the arena. We don’t want it.' And when you have folks that say an absolute no. Not, “Maybe we’ll take some housing, six stories high, eight stories high, but we don’t want the arena.” Obviously, I wanted it all.
...

"But it was our demand, you can blame me indirectly and others, as a holy grail of Atlantic Yards, that there must be a maximum affordability of housing. If it was up to me, it would be 75 percent."

NoLandGrab: It seems the Beep has conveniently never heard of the community-backed UNITY Plan, which advocates for much more density than "six stories high, eight stories high." As for affordable housing, Markowitz has to know that non-profit developers like the Fifth Avenue Committee or the Pratt Area Community Council could build two or three times the number of affordable units with the same amount of subsidy being sought by Forest City Ratner.